


The Still of the Silence

by kosmickway (KMDWriterGrl)



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KMDWriterGrl/pseuds/kosmickway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grissom ruminates on different types of silence as he watches Sara convalesce at Desert Palm. A post-ep for "Dead Doll."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Still of the Silence

_“… And I miss the still of the silence as you breathe out and I breathe in …” Matt Nathanson_

Gil Grissom was no stranger to quiet and therefore knew better than most people how many different types of silence there could be. There was awkward silence, grim silence, and angry silence. There was the silence that came with grief and the silence that came with awe. Gil loved contented silence, companionable silence, and most of all the silence that fell between two people after they’d loved each other thoroughly, when their breath was timed to each other and their hands were joined.  

It was silent now, reverently so, the drapes in the bedroom pulled halfway shut to filter the sun. Sara was asleep and Grissom was watching her, drinking in the details of her face and body. Four days after her rescue from the desert, he still couldn’t take his eyes off of her, didn’t want to, irrationally fearful that she’d disappear again. From the moment she’d been admitted to Desert Palm, he’d slept at her bedside holding her hand and hadn’t let her out of his sight since he’d brought her home several hours before. After the constant sounds of the hospital, Grissom was glad to settle himself and Sara into the sweet silence of their own house. 

***

FOUR DAYS EARLIER:

He breathed a profound sigh of relief when Sara’s eyes fluttered open in the back of the Life-flight chopper. Thank god! He wanted to say something to her … many things, actually …but the words were bottled in his throat, the way they always seemed to be around her.  

The med-flight paramedic was talking softly to Sara as he hooked in an IV, laid cool compresses behind her neck and on her forehead and took her pulse and blood pressure. Grissom had to bite back a stab of unreasonable anger that any hands other than his should be on Sara right now.

“Can you tell me her name again, sir?” the paramedic asked, looking at Grissom. 

“Sara Sidle,” he replied, shifting on the helicopter’s bench to get closer to Sara amidst the tangle of wires and cords. The throbbing of the propellers, the beep and hiss of the machines, the sound of the wind rushing past … it was too loud, too distracting. He needed silence, just a moment or two of it, to figure out what he wanted (needed) to say to Sara but he very much doubted he was going to get it. 

The medic was using scissors to cut away Sara’s make-shift sling. “Sara, I’m going to splint your arm until we get to the hospital.” He worked as he spoke, so quickly and gently that the arm was again immobilized before Sara could comment. “I’m worried about the way you’re breathing. I’m going to push your shirt up so I can get a look at your ribs.” 

Grissom’s scene-acclimated stomach gave a hard lurch when he saw the dark bruises and pressure marks blooming across Sara’s torso from her time under the car. Her fair skin had been scraped raw from sand and grit and was scattered with bites and stings from insects that had crawled in under her shirt and vest. He reached out to touch her raw skin, stopped, wanting to do something—anything—to help but not sure whether he’d be allowed. 

The medic clearly understood what Grissom was going through. He handed Grissom some gauze and a plastic bottle of peroxide. Grateful to have something to do, he tenderly cleaned cuts, scrapes, and stings, reverently touching each injury as if touching could make it go away. Even half-conscious, Sara groaned and Grissom felt horrible. 

“Fractured ribs on both sides,” the medic commenting, making a note on his laptop. Grissom found himself uncertain where to put his hands, sure that every place he touched Sara would be a place that shattered like crystal or crumbled like ash. 

“We’re about ten minutes out from Desert Palm,” the pilot called back. “How’s she doing?”

Grissom leaned closer to Sara, tuning out the medic and the pilot’s conversation, concentrating on the sound of her breathing, reassured that he could hear the sweep of breath in and out of her lungs, even if it was hitched and strained. It gave him the moment of stillness he needed to gather his thoughts. 

“Gil,” Sara whispered, licking her lips. 

“Right here, dear,” he answered, squeezing her hands. “I’m right here with you.”

“Are you okay?”

“Sweetheart, you’re the one we just pulled out of the desert. Don’t worry about me.”

“Tell me,” she insisted, putting pressure on his fingers with her good left hand. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her, returning the squeeze. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“She said she was going to hurt you.” Sara’s voice cracked. She swallowed hard. “She said she was going to hurt you the way you’d hurt her.”

“She DID hurt me,” Grissom replied, then winced when he saw the look of panic cross her face. He laid a hand on her un-cut cheek and carefully brushed her hair back. “When she took you,” he amended quickly. “She hurt me by taking you. But I’ve got you back. And I’m fine. And you will be, too.” He wanted—badly—to kiss her forehead, but knew it was better to let the compress lay where it was. Instead he ran his fingertips gently up and down her forearm, the heat rising from her skin hot enough, in his mind, to blister. “We’re almost at the hospital.”

“Did you get my clues?” she whispered. “My vest? My cairns?”

“We got them,” he assured her. “My clever girl. Nick’s the one that found you though. He saw you just off the road.”

“I was close?”

“You were close.”

“Good to know GPS hasn’t ruined me.” She fell silent for so long Grissom wondered whether she’d fallen unconscious. But she spoke again as the chopper began its descent. “Stay with me, Gil.”

“I’m not leaving your side,” he promised, finding it easy, that time, to find the right words.

***

A slant of sunlight fell onto the bed, highlighting the shadowy bruises on Sara’s face. Her right cheekbone was a dark purple surrounding an angry red cut and her nose and forehead were blotchy with sunburn. The worst of the swelling had gone down under ice packs and cool cloths, but even the darkest concealer would be hard pressed to hide the marks of the beating Sara had taken at Natalie’s hands. 

Her right forearm was splinted in a lightweight cast from her wrist to well above her elbow. He didn’t need to see under the cast to know that there was heavy bruising there as well, and skin and muscle forced out of shape by the pressure of the heavy Mustang crushing it. It had been that arm that was the source of the worst pain and anxiety. Losing the use of her arm, even in the short-term, was Sara’s worst nightmare. 

He’d been with her in the ER as her doctor set her broken arm, her fingers digging into the palm of his hand, her face buried in the crook of his neck. He’d never know how she stayed quiet during the procedure, but she had, only giving way to a soft whimper of pain when the doctor grasped her heavily bruised arm to set the bone. He’d felt her tears, though, as they slid down his neck. 

“Don’t be brave on my account,” he’d murmured, squeezing her good hand. “I can’t think of a better time to scream.”

“I don’t scream,” she returned, her voice torn practically to shreds. “At least not from pain.”

He knew intuitively, in the way that he had learned to read Sara’s sense of humor, that if she had been able to look at him just then, she would have been smirking. He could (and did) make her scream … and it was a welcome counterpoint to the soft sounds that usually accompanied their lovemaking. 

“You’re being a lot braver than I would be,” he assured her, bringing a hand up to stroke her hair. It was matted with dirt, sand, and blood and tangled from the wind, but touching it was just as sweet now as when he buried his face in it after she’d washed it with her favorite organic chamomile and mint shampoo.  

After her arm was set and her cuts bandaged, her skin coated in aloe and cool compresses to bring down her core temperature and an IV was pumping saline and electrolytes into her good arm, they took her away from him to move her to a room. He walked out into the noise of the ER waiting room to the bombardment of questions from Catherine, Warrick, Nick, Greg, Brass, and Sophia. 

“She’s going to be okay,” he announced and the cacophony of cheers, exclamations, and sighs of relief were the first welcome sounds of the day. 

The first day Sara mostly slept under sedatives. The nurses didn’t wake her when they came to check her vitals, just quietly asked him if he needed anything, placed more compresses on Sara’s sunburned skin, and left. With the door shut, the sounds of the hospital were blunted and he was alone in the half-dark with her, holding her hand and occasionally stroking her hair, his mind free to run over the events of the last days like a film spooling backward, allowing him to sink into the near total silence that was broken only by Sara’s breathing.  

The second day she woke up screaming from nightmares, shattering the silence and jerking him to awareness. He was right there beside her, running his hands over her, soothing with his voice when touch didn’t help. She didn’t want the room dark OR silent after that so the blinds were opened, the TV went on, and soon everyone from the lab was streaming into the room with flowers and balloons, cards and kisses and well-wishes. When she started to nod off, the others left and he sat holding her hand, this time with classical music playing softly on the television so that the room wasn’t completely quiet. 

The third day she slept fitfully and when she woke, it was always his voice she wanted to hear, an acknowledgement that he was still there and that Natalie hadn’t done anything that she had threatened. Even the knowledge that Natalie was in jail didn’t help, nor did Brass’s reassurances that she wouldn’t be out for a LONG time. They watched a lot of movies that day, using the DVD player and surround sound speakers on Archie’s high end laptop. Sara couldn’t bear the silence. 

When she woke up frightened and hyperventilating despite the light and music in the room, Grissom decided to try his own form of therapy. He phoned Catherine, who had the key to his house, and gave her a list of items he wanted. She arrived an hour later, requested items and milkshakes in tow. She sat with them for awhile, sipping milkshakes and watching episodes of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” (to which Sara was a serious but closeted addict), then left to go back to the lab, promising to come pick them up the next morning when Sara was ready to be discharged. 

After the episode was over, he turned off the DVD player. “Hey, there’s still one more on that disc!” Sara protested. 

“I’ve got something better,” he said and extended a hand to her. 

In the bathroom, the nurse had set up a chair that pulled up close to the lip of the sink. Sara’s favorite shampoo and conditioner sat next to the faucet, along with several brushes and combs. 

“What’s this?” she asked, sinking into the chair with a wince. 

“I thought you’d be getting sick of the dirt and sand in your hair,” he said, gently gathering her hair in his hands and helping her lean back against the towel cushioning her neck from the lip of the sink. “And I thought a scalp massage might feel good.” He turned on the water, adjusted the temperature, and began untangling her hair, rinsing out the grit before pouring shampoo into his hands and lathering up, using his fingers to rub her scalp and massage the unburned back of her neck. Sara sighed and shut her eyes. 

“How does that feel?” he asked, rinsing and applying conditioner. “Better?”

“So much better,” she sighed. “Thank you, Gil.”

He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Think about how good this feels when she starts coming into your thoughts. Think about my hands in your hair, the warmth of the water on your skin, the smell of the shampoo. Think about how relaxed you are under my hands, how much you trust me. Think about how much I love you.” He kissed her tenderly. “Don’t let her win, Sara.”

The night wasn’t completely silent, but every time she woke up he was there and able to talk her back to sleep, his hands stroking her hair, his lips on her temple.

 She’d fallen asleep soon after they’d arrived home, the small tasks of walking up the steps, taking a bath (he washed her hair for her again), and eating lunch wearing her out in a way that was disturbing to him. She had been quiet for several hours, long enough for him to shower and shave, to put the house to rights, to let Hank out into the yard. Nick had called to check on them, putting Warrick and Greg on speaker phone so they could send their love to Sara. Then Brass had called and Robbins after that. Even Ecklie had deigned to make a phone call. And, most surprising, Lady Heather, who inquired if there was anything she could do to help, though he was fairly certain that offer was directed more toward him than Sara.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone about any of it yet, hadn’t been able to verbalize the feelings about Sara’s ordeal that were bottled in his chest, the scenes that were playing over and over behind his eyes. His silence, he knew, was worrisome to them but he also knew they’d respect it, the way they’d respected Nick’s silence after the box and Catherine’s after Eddie had died. Despite the amount of talking they did on a daily basis, his team was, on the whole, a quiet group of people who understood that some things must be done in solitude in the still of the night or the hush of the dawn before the world awoke and imposed its cacophony. He would come to terms with Sara’s struggle not by talking to them, but by processing inside his head, in the cathedral-like stillness that he imposed when he couldn’t obtain silence any other way. 

Sara shifted, tossed her head on the pillow, moaned a little as a dream overtook her, breaking the room’s stillness. He smoothed her hair away from her forehead, caressed the damaged skin as lightly as he dared, his touch whisper soft. 

She opened her eyes, saw him leaning over her, and raised her hand to his cheek. “Hi,” she murmured.

“Hi.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m all alone in a too big bed.” She tugged at him gently. “Come lie down with me.”

“That’s probably not the best idea,” he said, thinking of her broken arm, her cracked ribs, the bruising all over her body. 

“I won’t break,” she insisted. “And I’m going to be wearing this cast for a while, so you may as well get used to it. I’m sure as hell not sleeping by myself while it heals.”

He settled beside her on the pillows, turned on his side to face her. “You win. I can’t refuse you anything.”

“Anything?” Sara asked mischievously, eyes sparkling. 

“Uh oh. What have you got in mind?”

“Garden of Eden for dinner?” she asked hopefully, naming her favorite vegetarian restaurant which happened to be on the other side of town.

“Anything for you, dear.” He took her good hand in his, twined their fingers. “But in a while. I want to just lie here with you and listen to you breathe.”

Sara raised their intertwined hands and pressed a kiss to his fingers. “So do I.”

END. 


End file.
